As I listened, I had an epiphany regarding habits. I have been thinking of habits purely in terms of physical activity: flossing teeth, reading the Bible, daily exercise, etc. It seems to me that it could be useful to consider an entire second category of habits: habits of thought.
No doubt others have made this connection, but for me it opens up new possibilities to explore: Does the "Habit Loop" hold for patterns of thought? Are thought patterns triggered by a particular cue? Are they geared towards a reward of some type? Can bad thinking habits be broken in the same way as bad physical habits?
My interest in habits this past year was an off shoot from my starting point: the question of how much control we have over our own thinking.
I had come to consider the information about habit formation to be an interesting and useful, but separate, rabbit hole.
Now I find that it might have led me right back to my starting point!
I need to give it some thought...
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* Melissa is taking a well-deserved break for a few days to visit her friend Emily in New Jersey. We left the house at 4:45 am. That gave me a good excuse not to stay up until midnight last night.
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